Weiqi Gao's Observations - eclipse tag

SWT Detractors, Rejoice...

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 12:45:55 GMT

... for it doesn't work with the newly updated Java SE 6 On The Mac:

Chris Adamson: I think you have that backwards. Apple's JVM has been Cocoa-based for a while now (since 1.4). SWT is Carbon-based. And even that wasn't a deal-breaker before. The real problem seems to be that:

The new JVM is 64-bit Intel-only

You can't mix 64-bit and 32-bit code in an OSX process

Carbon is 32-bit only and apparently will remain that way

SWT is Carbon-based

For what it's worth, QuickTime for Java won't work on the Mac's Java 6 for exactly the same reason. Carbon is de facto (but not de jure) deprecated, and therefore any Java libraries that use Carbon are in big trouble.

Jess Holle:
Nigel wrote:
> wow, the thread http://www.eclipsezone.com/eclipse/forums/t97750.html
> has been locked down because they didn't like people telling them that
> SWT was a bad idea....

For most use cases and development, SWT seems to be one of those ideas whose time has come and gone...

I'm sure porting SWT from 32-bit Carbon to 64-bit Cocoa is something that is doable but will require some time and effort. The question is: "Is it being done?"

It seems it's time for Eclipse users to be patient, as Swing users were patient in the last ten years.

How Would You Have Reacted...

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 13:38:35 GMT

... if C|Net tells you Microsoft to work with Eclipse on Java?

Well, Ted Neward is setting us an example:

Ted Neward: My first reaction has to be characterized as... WTF?!?
My second reaction has to be characterized as... WTF?!?

There's some serious credulity issues here. Not credibility, mind you, because I believe the reporter is entirely accurate in this story, but credulity. As in, "That's incredulous!", which is another way of saying...

WTF?!?

Ted went on to remind us how Sun and Microsoft fought over J++, and how J++ had delegates way back when, and how C# 3.0 has lambda expressions which are a natural outgrowth of delegates, and how Java people is still longing for something similar called closures.

I think the real story is not as incendiary. Microsoft is helping Eclipse with porting SWT from Win32 to WFP, just like they would help any other Win32 application to port to WFP. It's not a big deal.

If you are a little bit curiouser, you would do a Google search on the Eclipse guy's name that was mentioned. I did. And what did I find?

See, things aren't always what the press-releases make you to believe. You see, SWT relies more on the underlying system, and the underlying system is going out of their ways to help SWT. Good for SWT. (And Microsoft, and Apple! Where is Gtk+? Red Hat, Novell, Sun (a big GNOME backer), are you listening?)

How To Turn A Yes/No Question Into A Four Way Choice

Tue, 20 Jun 2006 17:00:32 GMT